I have just started reading Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist by Fred
Newman and Louis Holzman and they were arguing that the lack of an ending of
development was more intentional than a stumbling.
"Learning that leads development implies development that is endless, for
one and for all. The politics of endless learning and limited development
is fundamentally conservative; it asserts that 'history is over' for us as
individuals and as a species, that qualitative transformation is no longer
possible. The politics of learning serving endless development is radical.
How I appropriated the qwerty keyboard example was how things that made
sense at one time in history are still used even though they no longer make
any sense. I more or less translated the example to teaching in which past
educational practices that were designed for the industrial age are still
being used today; although, today children are going to enter an entirely
different society. Current educational theories are more in line with the
abilities we want out of our future children, but the recitation script is
still the most popular. Education, like the qwerty keyboard is not so much
putting a present day interpretation on the past, but how outdated practices
of the past control the progress of the future.
In reference to the pole vaulting I appropriated it as how cultural tools
have winners and losers. Most sociocultural research tends to focus on
solely the positive aspect of cultural tools. I found that in framing the
debate as a tension between agent and cultural tool an important extension
of sociocultural research occurred.
NATE SCHMOLZE
http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu
People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
People who possess strong feelings even people with great minds
and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls
L.S. Vygotsky